


find me where the light meets the dark

by KrazySuperGirl



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics), Red Robin (Comics), Superboy (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Clones, Blood and Gore, Dark, Dehumanization, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Lazarus Pits, M/M, Slavery, Sort Of, Temporary Character Death, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29273553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KrazySuperGirl/pseuds/KrazySuperGirl
Summary: They have never seen the outside world. All they know is each other and their master.
Relationships: Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent
Comments: 2
Kudos: 38





	find me where the light meets the dark

Timothy coughs. It’s a harsh sound, but what makes Conner flinch is the blood it sends cascading down his chin. He puts his hands to the wound in Timothy’s stomach, but all it does is make him groan and coats Conner’s hands in blood and bile. Conner touches his jaw gently as Timothy’s eyes struggle to focus on him.

“No.” Conner whispers brokenly. “No. Don’t-don’t go, please.”

Timothy raises his hand in an attempt to put it to Conner’s face, but it falls uselessly. He rasps, “Don’t...be afraid. I will...find you...again.”

“Don’t leave.” Conner sobs. “You cannot...”

Several feet away, Ra’s al Ghul watches them with sharp eyes. As Timothy’s lungs let out their last breath and Conner wails in denial, Ra’s murmurs, “Hm. Curious.”

After all, the slaves have never said a word in their master’s presence before. They aren’t even supposed to know how to talk.

Ra’s gestures to his assassins, and one comes forward to take the body. But the one who is still alive cries desperately, “No! No, please! Please, don’t take him!”

Ra’s looks at him for a moment, then says, “Leave it.”

The Superman clone will be rotting away in shackles. What does it matter if it rots alongside Batman’s?

The assassin nods, and a second assassin comes forward to help haul the two out of the room. Another one begins to clean the blood off the floor.

-

-

They have never seen the outside world. All they know is each other and their master.

They were born in near-adult bodies, as the results of a cloning experiment. But the experiment failed. Not only were they not the mindlessly obedient drones Ra’s al Ghul wanted, but the geneticists didn’t even manage to impart either Superman’s powers or Batman’s intimidating stature to their clones.

In the end, Ra’s decided to keep them. They may not have been what he was looking for, but they could be useful nonetheless. So they became his slaves. Most of the time they waited on him, attending to whatever his desires were. 

But sometimes he made them fight each other. Sometimes he made them fuck each other. It amused him.

They never do learn the difference between those two things.

At one point, an assassin had, in a fit of whimsy, decided to name his Master’s pets as he escorted them back to their...accommodations. His companion reprimanded him, but the damage was done. The slaves became Timothy and Conner.

Their lives consisted entirely of serving their master. Despite seeing them as nothing more than creatures made to obey him, or perhaps because of it, Ra’s al Ghul kept them on a tight leash. They may not have received their templates’ most recognizable qualities, but they did inherit their wills. It showed in the little rebellions, the ones Ra’s had no knowledge of but still had suspicions: claiming names, teaching themselves to speak, making a game of discovering just how many small items they could steal from Ra’s al Ghul’s chambers or from his assassins.

Months, years, days into their lives as Ra’s al Ghul’s slaves, Robin entered their little world. He arrived in a whirlwind of insults and curses, fists and clashing blades. The master and the colourful child spoke to each other of unfamiliar things such as fathers and cities and destiny and justice and power. Then Robin picked apart the chains he had been tied up with and walked out, leaving a heap of bodies in his wake.

Out of pure curiosity, Timothy managed to replicate this feat on his and Conner’s shackles, but the world of Ra’s al Ghul’s compound was all they knew, and they did not know how to survive away from it. 

After a stretch of time they have no way of measuring, months, years, or days, Timothy’s body began to deteriorate. The cloning process was imperfect and, though the very nature of cloning an alien required a great amount of effort and precision, cloning a human required no such attention to detail. As a result of that complacency, Timothy began to die, slowly but surely.

Ra’s only had to gesture, and Timothy and Conner were kneeling in front of him, heads bowed. Perfect subservience, except for the tremors that ran through Timothy’s body.

Ra’s lifts Timothy’s chin, almost gently, then in just the blink of an eye, Ra’s sword is buried in his stomach.

-

-

Timothy has stopped bleeding by now. His heart has stopped and there is no more blood to pump through his veins and out of his wound. 

But even though the blood is becoming sticky and congealed, and the body is stiffening and has long since gone cold, Conner holds on, rocking back and forth slowly as tears fall. But gradually, even those dry up, and there’s nothing left but the silence.

Days, minutes, hours later, Conner pulls out from the folds of his clothes a thin piece of metal, stolen from an assassin. He slots it into the hole in the shackles around his wrists, and they open, letting him go free.

As he gets the door open then carries Timothy’s body out of the room, an assassin notices them. Conner gently puts Timothy down, then turns to the assassin. A knife, lifted from a cook who had delivered Ra’s’s meal, slips into his hand.

Conner lunges, surprising the unprepared assassin, and his blade slices across the man’s neck. 

Conner turns and picks Timothy back up, leaving behind the assassin choking on his own blood.

-

-

It had been Conner who had first fallen in love with the sun, but it had been Timothy who had followed its rays to the window.

They never find out why exactly they were moved. Maybe the cell was needed for another more hated prisoner, or maybe it just needed spring cleaning. Either way, they were moved from what was essentially just a hole with a door, to something that was almost a room. And on the floor, was a small square patch of sunlight.

Conner had laughed - giggled, really - when he put his hand into its beam and discovered that it was warm.

“I want to keep it,” he said as he cupped his hands in the light.

Timothy climbed over his legs and put his own hands into the light. He pointed at the shadows their hands were making on the floor. “It’s not real.”

“I like it.” Conner insisted. He continued to be fascinated by the sunlight, and by the time they were fetched to serve Ra’s, his skin had already become noticeably darker. Timothy though, had been more interested in the fact that the little patch of sun moved.

They took turns lifting each other high enough to see what they could from the tiny window just below the ceiling. It wasn’t much, nearly nothing, but it was something other than Ra’s al Ghul and his assassins and the blank walls of the compound.

When they were eventually returned to their old cell, Conner became depressed, but Timothy started to think. And the next time they were brought to serve Ra’s, he picked a hair pin right from an assassin’s hair, one that would fit perfectly into keyholes.

-

-

Conner puts Timothy into the water, and it seeps into the open wound, clinging and viscous. As the green water closes over the last inch of Timothy’s face, Ra’s al Ghul bursts into the room, followed by a phalanx of assassins.

Conner turns to face him, covered in blood, and a half-feral look in his eyes. Ra’s opens his mouth, ready to order his assassins to attack.

Then Timothy rises from the Pit with a sudden violence. He stumbles to his feet next to Conner, chest heaving, and green water dripping into puddles on the floor by his feet. He raises his head, then leaps, bearing the first assassin to the ground as he tears into him.

Two more assassins come at him, and he turns on them, using a blade from the first assassin to cut them down, his Pit-fuelled rage making him fast and brutal. Behind him, Conner sinks a knife into the chest of an assassin who tries to sneak up on Timothy. Together, they carve a bloody path through the assassins, until the only ones left standing are them and Ra’s.

“Enough.” Ra’s says. “Stop this.”

Timothy’s teeth are filled with blood, and when he tilts his head and grins, it has the effect of making him look like a dangerous bird of prey eyeing its next meal. His eyes glow green in the low light.

“You are not my master anymore, Ra’s.” Timothy says mockingly.

Ra’s’s hand goes to the hilt of the sword at his waist, but his mistake has been forgetting to pay attention to Conner.

Conner’s hand comes around his throat, holding a knife, and in the next second, Ra’s al Ghul falls to the ground as blood pours out of his neck. Timothy doesn’t even bother to step over his body.

When they get to the door leading out of the compound, the bright daylight blinds them, and they have to stop. Timothy, with his Pit-heightened senses, takes longer to adjust, but Conner steps out into the sun after only a moment.

Then he turns around and extends a hand towards Timothy, still in the shadowed doorway. Timothy takes it, and they both begin to walk.

A new world is waiting.

**Author's Note:**

> Oops.


End file.
